World News - Episcopal Church Starts Casting Votes for Bishop and Gay Ban; Ties to Anglicans Hang in Balance

Episcopal bishops are choosing a new national leader as the denomination fights for a continued role in the global Anglican fellowship. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold is ending his nine-year term while Anglican archbishops are demanding that the church stop electing gay bishops at least for now. Three years ago, the denomination outraged many Anglicans by confirming the first openly gay Episcopal bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. arm of the Anglican Communion. The election for Griswold's successor is taking place Sunday during the Episcopal General Convention, where delegates will decide whether to enact the moratorium. If the assembly fails to adopt a ban, the communion could break apart. ... http://abcnews.go.com

Hours before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees. This cable, marked "sensitive" and obtained by The Washington Post, outlines in spare prose the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees' constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government. ...This will take you to the story but the Cable Document that it will link to is in PDF.. ...http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/16/AR2006061601768.html

She came to the courthouse to have a domestic violence petition issued against her boyfriend. But Amanda E. Thompson was the one who was arrested for allegedly being in possession of a controlled substance. According to law enforcement reports, Thompson, 32, of Lake, was arrested at the Logan County Courthouse earlier this week after county officials were notified that she had hidden illegal substances in a coffee cup she was carrying. Court Marshall Bo Ryan reportedly told sheriff's deputies that upon searching Thompson, he found two crack pipes and a rock of crack. The Logan Banner reported that the woman's boyfriend was the one who told on her....http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2090440

Bringing goats to Virginia City was one of Allyson Adams' first acts as the new mayor of this old gold mining town. Nearly 200 of the animals are on Boot Hill, eating knapweed. "We need more goats," Adams, who became mayor this spring, recently told some people at Virginia City's Metropolitan Market. "Next year, we'll probably need 1,000." Goats were brought from Conrad to eat weeds that threaten Virginia City's native plants. Adams sees the animals as an alternative to spraying chemicals, but said chemical use along some roadways here will continue. The mayor believes goats remind Virginia City's tourists and residents that Montana is an agricultural state, where animals serve a purpose. ...http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2090438

A federal judge has delayed sentencing for former Enron Corp. Chief Executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who were convicted last month of fraud and conspiracy in the company's collapse. In court documents filed late Friday, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake agreed to a motion by the defense teams to delay sentencing for the former Enron chiefs to October 23 from September 11.Lay, 64, and Skilling, 52, were found guilty at trial of hiding the financial problems at Enron, once the nation's seventh-largest company, which collapsed into bankruptcy in December 2001.Lay, 64, was convicted of six counts of conspiracy and fraud and faces a maximum of 45 years in prison. Four other charges of bank fraud carry a maximum of 120 years in prison, but Lay is unlikely to be sentenced to more than six months for those counts because no financial damages occurred....http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060618/ts_nm/enron_sentencing_dc

MORE than 6000 men and women have deserted from the US army since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. In the British forces, the figure stands at around 1000. The soldiers are leaving because they are sickened by the bloodshed in Iraq; because they believe the war is illegal; because they are on the verge of nervous breakdown; and because they are having to buy their own boots or are not being given enough food and water. Labour MP John McDonnell says that troops are now “questioning the morality and legality of the occupation”. In Britain, deserters rarely – if ever – publicly explain why they have refused to fight. In the US, however, it’s a different story. ...http://www.sundayherald.com/56277